Wed, 30 Jan 2019 15:52:17 -0800WeeblySat, 12 Jan 2019 03:24:49 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/experiencing-the-cacophonies-of-feargaining-empathy-for-my-studentsFear is the death-knell to everything good in life. It sounds its peals of insecurity deep in our souls. The clamorings sound inside me: I’m not smart enough; I’m not creative; people will see how much I really don’t know; everything I write has been written before; it’s cliché; I’m cliché. These thoughts slice through any façade of competence or barricade of education I throw at them. If I experience these thoughts as an educator, as an adult, what must our students experience? For the most part, when and if we write as adults, it isn’t graded, especially in a public manner. So why am I afraid to go to a writing retreat? And share what I write with other teachers? I wasn’t… at first.

I firmly believe that fear keeps people from living their life to the fullest, from accomplishing great things. My personal vendetta against it is that if fear is my only reason for not trying something, that’s not good enough and by gosh, hold onto your coattails fear ‘cuz I’m kicking you aside and doin’ it. I have voiced this opinion vociferously to those close to me. However, as I prepared to go to the Ozarks Writing Project writing retreat, I perused the schedule and fear crept up, latched on and got me by the throat. Ten hours of writing! Share with the group! For publication in a professional journal! Yikes, what have I done?

I am a former freelance writer, paid for my writing in a former life, and yet these thoughts are going through my mind. What must it be like for my students when I assign a writing project? I can see the reason behind their constant rhymes that annoy me: How long should it be? Do we have to read it in front of the class? Will anyone else read it? What do I write about?

I can feel the insecurity creeping back in even now as I am writing this at the retreat. Why don’t I stop and put the laptop away and quit? Can’t. Must have a draft to share with my group in four hours. Hmmm, pressure is good? Perhaps! I fling assignments out to the students at school and sometimes give a nebulous one or two-week window. I bet many of them are like me and would benefit from pressure to get something on paper, a number of words or pages... a start.

Now, I’m stuck. Writer’s blockage, a seemingly immovable barrier I can’t get past. What do I tell students at this point? “Just get some words on the paper and then we will have something to work with. At this point, don’t worry, just write.” Now I know why they stare me down, with incredulous expressions. What the heck was I saying, just write? Write what? If I weren’t writing a stream of consciousness right now I would have no clue what to put here. Hmmm, teach students to go to a stream of consciousness when they are stuck? A proven technique for getting unstuck that I forgot about. I still feel dumb and unsure about what I’m writing, but I can tell the fear mongers are stepping back a few steps anyway.

Here is where I differ from most of my students… I love to revise, to slash and burn and pillage my writing. Delete this sentence, change that word, rewrite that paragraph and try to make my meaning clear. Even with my love of revision, I was scared to look at the first draft and possibly find nothing of value to keep. I did… I think?

I made it. I’m still writing. It was good to experience the fear… on this side of it anyway! I can be more empathetic with my students when they write.

I know I will re-experience the fear and conquer it again. I plan to arm myself with ways to lead my students through their writing battles to create, to write, continuing the fight against the ever-present fear. Its tones have been conquered and muted for now, but I can hear them in the distance waiting for me.

It rankles me every time. One of my top students will say, “I’m going to use the A+ program and then I will transfer to a four-year university.” This can work for certain students but I firmly believe for several reasons that starting out at the university is best for some students wanting a bachelor's degree.

First, the ones A+ works for: 1. A student who wants a two-year degree that is offered at a college that accepts A+. 2. A student who has no support at home and has to use their two free years to get a full-time job and pursue the rest of their degree at night. 3. A student who has no interest whatsoever in a bachelor’s degree and wants to get training for a good-paying job. 4. A student who mustered a 2.0 in high school.

I'm not against the A+ program. There are many students that it helps. Many.

But there is this idea of “free college” that permeates my high school and causes Top 15 students to go to a two-year tech school for their basics and then switch for their bachelor’s. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons.

First of all, most of the students in my rural district qualify for the Pell Grant, an income-based grant for college. In other words, free college money. At this point, it is a little over $5000 a year. Students who use A+ program FIRST have to use their Pell Grant. I found that out last year when helping a student try to fund an A+ college education, that you must fill out a FAFSA, the federal financial aid form for the A+ program and guess what? They use your Pell Grant money first before A+ will kick in. That means many students can choose an affordable university, use their Pell Grant, work part-time, beat the bushes for scholarships, take out a small loan if needed and come out even at a university.

Secondly, students who choose the Gen-Ed program at tech school and then switch to a four-year college miss out on the dorm experience, the friendship-building years that take place at the university level. These years are important to students who need to leave home, need to find out more about who they are, and stretch their wings in a somewhat sheltered environment. Dorm life offers experiences not available anywhere except maybe a summer camp. When else in your life is a 2 a.m. pizza and pillow fight with 20 people normal? Where else do you bond over shared deadlines of tests or papers? Dorm life also offers a step from home without the adult stresses of those bills, security, etc. Students who transfer after two years have to try and make friends when many groups are already established. They will either have to drive from home or live in an apartment with high school friends or on their own. Students who don’t get the dorm experience have to go from teen to adult with no buffer zone.

Thirdly, universities offer opportunities for personal and future career enrichment. Students can get in on the ground floor freshman year in student-run professional organizations, make friends and become leaders their junior and senior years. Students can take part in university-sponsored travel during holidays or summers to expand their horizons and help their resume’s. By attending a four-year university students are making lifetime contacts in their areas with other students. Alumni will go back to their university to hire many times.

Of course, it can be done. I believe for many students it is not the optimal choice and they need to think through their goals, their finances, and their family support. The life lessons learned at a university are innumerable and invaluable.

]]>Thu, 03 May 2012 14:40:45 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/this-i-believe-empathyEmpathy means being able to put yourself in someone else’s place and feel what they are feeling. It is not sympathy, feeling sorry for someone, but being able to understand what they are going through, being able to change perspectives for a moment. Two childhood experiences helped me develop empathy. Fourth grade...I carefully balanced the last bite of chocolate ice cream cone as I opened the classroom door. I made sure people were looking as I popped it into my mouth. My happiness died as Tony Blevins looked me in the eye and said, “Show off.” Any joy I had in getting out of school for the day with the elementary choir and getting to stop at Dairy Queen before heading back to school was stomped by his glare and hurt. I could see myself as he saw me. I could see how awful and rude I was. They had been working all day and I had shoved it in their faces how great of a day I had had. There was no need for it. It was mean. I got it. My actions were not all about me. Something that might make me happy could make others sad and I wanted to avoid that. Adolescence....I dug through the cabinet looking. I don’t remember what I was looking for. I just remember what I found. I found a note in a broken dish. I remembered breaking the dish years before. It was an accident, childish playing around in the living room and it had fallen and broken. I never knew it bothered my mom until I read the note in the dish. She had written it right after the incident. I could tell she was mad from her handwriting. The note said how we’d broken the dish and we hadn’t even said we were sorry. I felt terrible. I hadn’t realized it was important to her. I hadn’t realized she was upset. I wondered why she hadn’t said anything that day. I took away a realization that I hurt people sometimes by accident and that it’s always good to apologize. Empathy is understanding how the other person feels, putting yourself in their shoes. Things are still broken, I can’t change that, but the person knows I care about them and having empathy changes how I react to people. I try to react with kindness and understanding. It makes all the difference. ]]>Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:32:26 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/what-do-i-know-about-teaching-pt-1What do I know about teaching? I know it’s hard, if you really care and really want to do your best every day, every hour to reach students. I know I should work smarter than harder and I do, in some ways, better than I used to anyway.

I know that it means so much for the students to know that you really want the best for them. I think I have students who work harder for me because of this. I don’t know for sure because I don’t see them in other classes.

I know that it’s hard to balance academics with life. I wonder if my empathy gets in the way of their education. I want to treat them like adults, or as much as I can anyway. So I let them go to the nurse if they have a headache and the bathroom and the water fountain. I take late work because I want them to do it. I can deal with the annoyance of late assignments since it means they are doing something rather than nothing. I wonder if I didn’t take late assignments if they would pull up their bootstraps and get it in on time. Am I shooting myself in the foot?

I know that they appreciate that I like teens and that I care about my job. I know that I have fewer discipline problems because of it. I think they are affected when I say things like, “I’m just trying to do my job right now. Can you respect that?”

In the 174 forty-eight minute classes I have with them, I want to help them understand a little more about who they are so they can choose a fulfilling life instead of an empty one when those important choices come up in the next few years. I want to help them be better writers in all ways: fluency, creativity, analyzation, and organization. I want them to learn to think critically and be able to pull apart an argument, an article, a commercial and see what’s inside, what makes it tick. I want to give them a vision of a future they are in charge of, to a point. They have to deal with restraints of time and money as we all do but they can travel or go to college far away if they want it bad enough.

I know on many days I feel like a failure, like I didn’t do enough or plan well enough or research enough but life goes on. Some days are good. I see progress in someone. I do my best for them and still try to have a semblance of a life outside of school. The family needs attention, some food will be consumed then there will be dishes to deal with and homework to ask about, some exercise, reading, or writing might take place and there must be some time in there to just sit on the couch and decompress. Another 48-minute chance comes up tomorrow so I go on and I pray and I hope and I try again.

]]>Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:52:21 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/are-you-ready-for-what-the-national-writing-project-can-do-to-your-classroom"The Ozarks Writing Project Summer Institute is the most amazing professional development that a teacher could experience, K-college, any subject. We are learning by doing that we write to learn. We have come to the place where we can say, "We are writers." We have experienced writing for so many different purposes. We have immersed ourselves in the National Writing Project standards and used them daily. These standards give guidance to teachers on how to utilize writing to help students become better critical thinkers. No matter our subject matter, we are all taking new ideas, creative lesson plans and refreshed vision back to our classrooms. We have become NWP champions." July 2009

Can you imagine for a moment sitting in professional development for a full four-weeks, Monday-Thursday, for EIGHT hours? Horrifying, isn’t it? And yet, I wrote the excerpt above after having done this in July 2009. I’m still involved with the National Writing Project and it’s still impacting my classroom and me.

I had not even heard of the National Writing Project in 2002, my second year of teaching. A friend said, "Kim, I did the writing project in Kansas City last summer. You would love it." She told me it was four-weeks in the summer with a lot of writing. I stared at her like the crazy person she was. My excuse for not going was that I had three kids at home. But the real reason was it scared me silly to even think of it. I wasn’t a writer and I didn’t belong there.

Fast forward seven years- another friend said, "Kim, I went through the Summer Institute at Ozarks Writing Project. You should do it!" To my protestations of inadequacy she said, "Just come with me and see what it’s like." I went to a Saturday meeting of the Ozarks Writing Project and was hooked after two hours. We freewrote and shared it with each other. A fellow educator presented a demo of a great classroom idea and we participated as the students. It’s been three years since that Saturday. In the sidebar, is a "short" list of my involvement with the NWP.

The reason I fell in love with the National Writing Project is their modus operandi. Did you ever think professional development could be dynamic, human, open, challenging, humorous even? NWP is all these and more. Their mission, of course, is about writing: "The National Writing Project focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation's educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners." But NWP is so much more than this. Eight years into teaching and I’d been through so many different styles of PD. NWP was the first to not only span all subjects, all ages but also to take into account our humanness, our diversity, and celebrate it. I know I’m being nebulous. Let me be more specific.

The Beginning- Summer InstituteMost people start their NWP experience with the four-week Summer Institute (SI). During SI, we wrote and wrote and wrote and I "became a writer." Teachers learned from each other. Each day a teacher presented a demo of a great classroom idea, backed by research. Presentations had to include participation by the students, us!. No sage on the stage. As students, we wrote poems in French, we conducted science experiments and wrote about our results, we used "bait words" to write poems. We learned what it feels like to be a student again. My SI experience was exactly what I needed. Through it I experienced a model for teaching writing-- lots of writing, freewriting, writing groups, topic choice- yes I’m a language arts teacher and it turned my classroom upside down. But it also helped the high school science teacher from Willard, the sixth grade social studies teacher from Springfield, the French teacher from Ozark….

Technology-GurusWhen my Summer Institute ended, I participated in the Digital Storytelling Institute. Talk about frustrating- in one week we were writing a story/script, learning a beaucoup of Web 2.0 technology, videotaping, scanning photos, recording interviews and voice-overs and putting it all together on the computer. At the end of the week, after bashing my head against the computer several times, I had a nine-minute video about my grandparents and their gospel bluegrass music. NWP showed me how to use technology with writing. They continue to be on the cutting edge of technology in the classroom. They have a new site, Digital Is, about writing in a digital world. Their use of technology is thoughtful and produces critical thinking; it’s not just bells and whistles.

LeadershipI earned the title of Teacher Consultant after my Summer Institute. I even have one of those fancy-chancy nametags! However, it wasn’t just the nametag and title that turned my thinking around. NWP has given me the confidence to present and write about teaching. They believe that classroom teachers should be the leaders, should be the education experts, should be involved in education reform, should be the ones speaking out.

NWP gave me the courage to submit an idea to present at Write to Learn, the state language arts conference. 2012 will be my third year to present there. NWP gave me the courage to try NaNoWriMo- National Write a Novel month. I wrote 30,000 words in November 2009 but I went on to finish that book, 70,000 words, the next June. It’s not published but I’m trying! Through the National Writing Project, I met with congress people in Washington, D.C. to lobby. I was so scared the first year but NWP meant so much to me that I overcame it to tell my story to Roy Blunt, Billy Long and to Claire McCaskill‘s aide. NWP gave me the courage to create a website, to write a story for "After the Bell" in this magazine in 2010, and to become a paid blogger for Teaching Tolerance. Last but not least in Spring 2011, I won the MSTA Southwest Region Teacher of the Year. Then in November, MSTA presented me with the Secondary Teacher of the Year award for the state of Missouri! The support and encouragement I received from NWP was the key to all these wonderful things.

In the ClassroomI had struggled so much with teaching writing in my high school language arts room. It seemed I took longer grading the papers than the students did writing them! NWP showed me how to have students write more and how writing is thinking. We write and read a lot more now. Students freewrite, read Articles of the Week (K. Gallagher) and write a reflection. Through commonplace books, students learn more about themselves and have a place to think graphically. Through our Shoes papers, students learn what it’s like to walk in their peer’s shoes. I use writing groups now to help students get feedback. Because I write, I can now understand the struggles of writing better and be a better writing teacher. If you want to know more, some of these projects are on this website!

Ongoing research proves time and again that NWP positively impacts student learning. At the least look them up on the internet and at the most please consider going through a Summer Institute. It turned my classroom and my professional life upside down in a good way!

]]>Fri, 06 Jan 2012 21:18:00 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/breatheBy Kim BlevinsJust take a breath….There are certain things that just get under my skin in the classroom: disorder in the first minute or two of class, whining and the extremely intelligent precocious student seemingly out to prove something. This is the first year I have tried to stop and….breathe…. just breathe for a moment or two…and think- before I open my mouth and respond to these stimuli. The disorder at the beginning of class- I am a Harry Wong aficionado- the beginning of class is important. I still believe this. However, I am learning, on occasion I can go with the flow and make conversation with the students. See what they are talking about. Laugh with them. Grab the natural silence that occurs and then teach, baby, teach. You are possibly wondering, well what did she do before? Well, I forced it, I may have raised my voice, may have said the dreaded, “Shut up.” I’m not sure but that may have happened. I like them to be seated and be quiet and be ready but sometimes that isn’t how it’s going to be. I’m now trying to consciously notice my breathing and slow it down. Then smile and head to the front of the room and laugh with them. It has worked so far. Inside I jump for joy and think, “This is magic!” Whining- I have this visceral “Get away from me!” feeling when I hear that tone and message. This year, I breathe…and think…and say something pertinent. Here’s one I remember that happened recently. “These articles are stupid! I don’t need to know this stuff!” a student complained about our awesome Articles of the Week (thank you, Kelly Gallagher). I was angry but I breathed, in and out, let go of the anger, and said, “Well you guys are almost adults and you will be voting citizens very soon and it’s a good thing for you to be educated about the world.” “I’m not going to vote,” he responded. I could feel the class watching me, listening intently to see how I would respond. I calmly said that I’d rather he stay home and not vote if he were going to choose to be ignorant and sit on the couch scratching his belly. He smiled, the class smiled, and another student pounced on the speaker for his apathy and we moved on. Last but not least, the challenge from the extremely intelligent student- I had just told them about the Shoes project. I had told them how it was everyone’s favorite the years before. I had bragged on how I had presented this idea to teachers in two different workshops. I had read an example and handed out the directions. “Don’t you think this promotes teenage angst? Don’t we have enough of that?” the student challenged. My mouth fell open and then I got mad. Then I wasn’t. I looked at her and thought and took a moment to breathe. I responded kindly and thoughtfully. I let go of my ego. I followed up later. She was already working on it. I found out later from her parents that she was excited about the assignment. Go figure! It’s important for my students to see a good way to deal with anger. Not saying I will be able to do this every single hour of every single day. It’s an extremely stressful job and I’m human. But it makes my classroom environment better for the students and for me, Breathe, let go, and think- who’d of thunk? ]]>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:30:11 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/the-sunday-afternoon-snoozzzzzzeFri, 28 Oct 2011 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.organicwriting.org/edumakation-blog/you-can-bury-the-dead-but-you-cant-bury-the-past-part-1

Money, Mississippi- July 2011- Photo by Josh Montgomery

This blog is on the Teaching Tolerance website at: www.tolerance.orgThrough a grant from Teaching American History, I was part of a group of teachers who spent months reading, listening and watching films and videos about the civil rights movement before we took a trip to the South.But still it was history—far away, untouchable and remote. That was until the first day in Sumner, Miss.During the school year, I had taught the Emmett Till story to my high school students. Till was a 14-year-old black youth tortured and murdered because he flirted with a white woman. This story is also about the courage of Till’s mother who decided to have a glass-lid casket created so the world could see what had happened to her son. My students were mesmerized by the story.But now, I stood in the courthouse in Sumner, where Emmett’s uncle, Mose Wright, had bravely pointed out Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam as the men who’d come to get Emmett out of bed in the middle of the night from his Money, Miss. home. And I stood by the stairs where Milam made out with his wife for the cameras in celebration of the innocent verdict.We met a retired teacher who lived in Sumner. At the time of the trial, she was 15 years old and was “paying attention to boys, not the news.” She now had fascinating insider knowledge. Her teaching assistant was Mose’s daughter, Emmett Till’s cousin. Mose became more real to me, not just a man from long ago, but Uncle Mose, Father Mose to this woman working at a local school. It was the strangest feeling—almost as if history was in the cobwebs of that courthouse and I could touch it. It was a long day of travel. We started in Branson, Mo., ended in Greenwood, Miss., with a stop in Money. There’s not much in Money. There are a few houses, some railroad tracks and the ivy-covered skeleton of the store where Emmett flirted with Roy Bryant’s wife. I felt nothing there—no brushes with history, just a spot in the road with a historical marker. I wanted to follow Emmett’s last footsteps, to go to the shed where he was beaten, to stand on the riverbank where he’d been shot before a roughly 70-pound fan was tied around his neck with barbed wire and he was rolled into the river. I wanted to offer an emotional memorial. Rosa Parks said that she saw Emmett’s story in the news and it inspired her. A few months later she stayed in her bus seat, an action that began the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A young pastor was asked to lead the boycott and Martin Luther King Jr. said yes.Unlike so many other deaths that were swept under the rug, the horrors of Emmett’s death were brought into the open. Although the killers went free, his death helped light the fires of the civil rights movement.This was only the first day of our trip and I was just beginning to see that, although many might wish it, the past was not buried but was here in the stories of a local, in the bricks of the court room and in every cotton gin fan like the one that was placed around Emmett’s neck. During our visits to the civil rights “hotspots” I had almost felt history brushing by, so close to me, something I’d never experienced before. Now I can pass that on to my students.Blevins is a high school English and journalism teacher in Missouri.

A favorite and most dreaded time in my classroom is about to begin: the reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird." I love this book. It's an important book. It received a Pulitzer Prize and is on the Must-Read lists of books for a bzillion organizations. It contains characters and quotes that have entered our culture and our lexicon. Once again, I love this book. What I dread are the students who love to whine during the month we read this book. They don't give it a chance because it looks long. They don't give it a chance because they don't like reading. They make their opinions known very loudly and make it yucky for the students who like it, the students who aren't sure if they like it but they are giving it their best shot and for me. I have devised a WHINING FORM (below) for the students who persist in vocalizing their hatred. I have also a new attitude and way to communicate why we are reading this book due to another book, "Readicide" by Kelly Gallagher. I'm not asking my students to like the book. I hope they do and I think they will if they give it a chance but that's an aside, not the main point. What's the main point? That they read a classic, an important book, one that every Freshman or Sophomore in the United States and England and who knows how many other countries read every year, a book that challenged ideas of racism and prejudice in the 60s during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a book we can relate to through it's stories of a small town and of a brother and a sister playing in the front yard in the summertime. I'm not dreading it anymore... To Kill a Mockingbird, here we come!

Are other writers as strange as I? Or am I just wrong? It's entirely possible! I started writing for myself in the summer of 2009 after I experienced the Ozark Writing Project's Summer Institute. I had a life-changing experience that summer and the floodgates of writing opened for me and in me. The thing I feel so odd about is all the different subjects and formsI like to write and want to write. Project 1: I want to write young adult fiction and I have a "book" begun during NaNoWriMo 2009, a challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I just finished a query letter to Laura Rennert at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Yes, you read that right. I began the book November 1, 2009; finished the book in June 2010 and just now sent a query letter. Hey, it's scary! I did send it out to two contests last fall and was rejected but took their advice on changing the first chapter.

Project 2: I love to write humorous short essays about my journey as a woman being dragged kicking and screaming into middle age. I have two stories on More magazine's site. One is about running and how much I suck at it (also how it compares to writing). The other is about my EF trip to Italy with students and how the men all looked at Kayla and none at me and how hard that was in so many ways.

Project 3: I have written a lot about my struggles as a teacher and a woman in today's world. What to do with these? Nothing. They sit on my hard drive with nowhere to go. Project 4: I would like to write more stuff about cool classroom ideas. I have written two articles about the Shoes project in my room. One was published on the Teaching Tolerance site and one has either been rejected by English Journal or they'll be emailing me ANY day now. I would love to write more about teaching and my thoughts on how it should be done but how do you do that when there are SO many wonderful teachers and who am I anyway to tell anyone how to teach? I've written a lot about Organic Teaching and I think I need to blog about this so I'm not overwhelmed but all I have is five pages of notes and thoughts- and uh, a web address I bought and can't figure out how to create. (looking down in shame)

Project 5: I wrote a short historical fiction story with my eighth graders (hmm that would be about five years ago) about a boy who didn't want to be in Hitler Youth but had to. I couldn't stop thinking about him and a couple of years ago I wrote four more chapters and I'm stuck. I'm scared. How do you write historical fiction? I don't want to screw it up and offend anyone. I still love my character Till though and would love to finish this.

Project 6: I am trying to keep a blog for parents about what goes on in my classroom at www.blevinsenglish2.weebly.com I just checked it and the piece I wrote about last week is not there. I wrote it. I thought I pushed the PUBLISH button. What happened? Epic fail.

Project 7: This blog- what do I put here? I want to put everything and I kind of have as I look through the posts. Just trying to get ahold of this whole idea is tough. I'm a teacher so is it okay if I curse in my humorous stuff? How do you write truthfully about wifely and motherly struggles without hurting someone's feelings? Eh.. I don't know.